Around the Galaxy

[The Golden Knight]

Day 17 Report:

Today's the day I can finally chart my way back home! I hit the checkpoint, so now it's upwards of 1,000 jumps back to Sol...another thousand extra solar systems to claim along the way!
Not even 10 jumps, and I already found just about everything except an Earth-Like world.
Welp, no more system mapping; too tedious. Unless it's like a water planet, or something...I'm just going to discover the planets, and head on. If my grammar seems a bit primitive, that's just a symptom of the mind going numb from the extended exploration thus far.
And then comes a system with 2 water worlds and 1 ammonia world.
The thing that makes me REALLY sad is that I can't do any of my creative writing while I'm out exploring; I can't set the mapper to some sort of auto-pilot, while I draw cute cartoon characters going on WWIII adventures. It's one or the other! And those characters look like plush dolls that had come to life. I love it!
And for anyone curious, I've been playing on lowest graphics setting until supercomputer comes in...so that I can minimize load times. I want the adorable OG Elite graphics. I know the current graphics are actually beautiful, but I want that adorable vector mode, just white lines that make triangles against a black background.
Took me most of the morning (like 2 or 3 hours) to make the last 50-some jumps into the checkpoint. YAY. And a water giant at the checkpoint.
The CQC circuit has a VERY SPECIFIC handful of no-lifes that are absolutely pushing me out...won't even bother going up against them, because again, getting my ass kicked is NOT my idea of fun, much less how to progress my credentials.
OOH, another Earth-Like world on the trip back, just a handful of jumps through.
Anyway, I made much less jumping progress today, as I spent more of the day at the forum as well as specifically studying the concept of Flight Assist OFF! That's what separates the men from the boys, and more specifically, is the key to true elite status in CQC. That said, for the initiate just jumping in, let me tell you that the first time sliding around can feel like a NIGHTMARE, which is why Flight Assist exists at all, and is always set to ON by default.
Anyway, because of time, the goal is 800 jumps till next checkpoint on the way home. I have found so many gas giants with life, that it's no longer remarkable.

 

[The Golden Knight]

Day 18 Report:

A handful more water worlds in the first 10 jumps, but beyond that, all is typical and numb. Like Expedition 1, it feels good to be going back home...even if I got a late start today because of "more urgent priorities". Slightly less than 25 jumps later, and I found an ammonia world.
34 jumps, and it's goodbye Galactic Center.
I'm trying to do 100 jumps a day, not just to keep a good and consistent pace, but because I need time to do "other things" (I can ALWAYS fixate on flying with 110% of my free time).
Thunderstorm at base...need to shut down, to be safe...cut off my connection, anyway.

Went to bed, got busy running XCOM, and now I'm back. At the 700-to-checkpoint mark, found 2 water planets around a white star.
Found 1 system with 90 bodies. Ho boy, this will take a while. And, back to bed. Yeah, it all counts as one report because either I've done so little, or because it all blends together.
Fun-fact, if you alt-tab out while in hyperspace, and the jump finishes before you snap back to attention, the ship defaults at zero throttle, even if you kept the stick up at full. Huh, good safety feature.
OH, and good news! I finally earned enough ARX to paste my ship's name on its paint. Freedom's Beginning, so now the 0 people who can get close enough to scan with Grade-A God-Given Eyeballs can see the name.
I've finally documented a very particular anomaly (see screenshot). It involves the Full-Spectrum Scanner zooming in on a planet with a star in sight, and the star will...sort of fragment. It's kind of gross and uncanny when it happens. I've seen it before, but this is the first time I've captured it. I know I can't be the first, but this could be a nother nice reminder to God to fix this galaxy.
I probably got like a dozen different water worlds since this last report...as fragmented as it may be.
600 jumps to checkpoint, and there's a water world here. Time to take a break.

 

[The Golden Knight]

Day 19 Report:

A few jumps today, all boring as always, then wow, Earth-Like world. A couple dozen jumps later, and a SECOND Earth-Like world?! Geez!
Got a couple water worlds and ammonia worlds, as well.
50 jumps for today (halfway to my "daily quota") and I'm leaving for Norma Arm. Yay.

A few jumps, and there's a water giant here as well. But again, all these things I've seen so many times throughout my journeys, it all blends together. Sure, some Earth-Like worlds are cool and all, but there's no intelligent life, no strange anomalies (like the "spiky things" I documented about a few reports back)...NOTHING! Just another white star, another ice ball planet, blah blah blah. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, yet with going upwards of 3,000 systems and finding "Spiky Things" ONLY ONCE, that's prepostrously rare. For those that have NO IDEA what I'm talking about, here's a picture of "Spiky Things"...and I'm shocked I did NOT upload this in the previous entry where they were featured.

75 jumps for the day, and found my third Earth-Like. Three...in the same DAY! How'd I get a hat trick?! The rest was just same old same old...all the way to the 100 jump quota. And that's all there is; there isn't any more.

Oh yeah, and P.S. But I caught of a glimpse of a guy with like 30-some THOUSAND whole systems to his name. That's the sort of thing that'd easily take the wind out of my sails. Now granted that such intel comes from third-party sources and may or MAY NOT be reliable, but if that is the bar we're setting, I might as well f'king give up, since I'm not even a tenth there and I already feel like I'm losing brain cells over the tedium.

Also "Rogue Planets" are a thing. Sources cited:

Rogue planets.

Are rogue planets even a thing in the game? If so wouldn’t they show up on the fss scanner? And if they don’t (assuming they even exist in the game) does that mean the fss actually has a limit to its scanning distance? Trying to settle something here.

forums.frontier.co.uk

All things Frontier Developments at E3 2014!

Think it might be "Paradiso Outpost", then an illegible (to me) line and "Independent Jurisdiction" on the line below. Your guess is as good as mine re the build no. It is indeed Paradiso Outpost - it's a deep space exploration support station. Michael

forums.frontier.co.uk

The theory goes that sometimes, there is stuff IN BETWEEN solar systems, and the only way to find those is to supercruise lightyears from a star system (like from Sol to Alpha Centauri WITHOUT using Witchspace, or Sol to Tau Ceti). Now THAT sounds ridiculously boring, and with the potential to find something amazing...basically, like some kind of absurdist-scale Gold Rush. Y'know, everyone gets hyped up over a CHANCE at richness only to find nothing but void.

"SINGLELIGHTTEST" may be a clue which serves the purpose of example...source cited:

The 3 mysterious companions of Sol? Has anyone noticed this before?

Sol has 3 companions in the skybox. I have no idea what they are supposed to be. Seems like a relic bug, but who knows? They are far far closer to Sol than Alpha Centauri. They can be seen from every direction (so that rules out them just being far off stars that randomly align). For now, I...

forums.frontier.co.uk

I tried keying that into the galaxy map, and got nothing. Picture to reveal specifics

Back on track, where HAVE other pilots found "Generation Ships"? Were any of them stuck "in between stars"? If so, that's evidence of us needing some ultra-fine tooth combing. If not (most likely), I have no idea how these people can suffer the boredom to do what they do, all to not even get all that much credit or kudos. Guess that's my ego showing, but we're getting to a point where the costs are outweighing the benefits - and no I am NOT talking about MONEY costs! (I mean more of a "What has NOT already been DONE TO DEATH" kind of benefit.)


At least I'm close enough to home to plot a direct course...and it's 842 jumps. Yeah, nuts to this. And I'm at a point where I don't even care anymore. I'm just sick of all the monotony, and sick of feeling expendable.

 

[The Golden Knight]

Day 20 Report:

I tried skimming the galactic map for "Rogue Planets", and saw a handful of Neutron Stars...then 1 Black Hole that was within 100 jumps, so I sprinted for that. Well, I WOULD'VE, had my first jump not included 2 water worlds...first discovered.
As for the black hole, I doubt I'd be the first one there, but it IS off the beaten path, with plenty of undiscovered stars along the way, so...who knows, until I actually get there.
Ammonia and Earth-Like, about 30 jumps to black hole...or 50.
9 jumps left

HOLY KRA'TA!!! I jumped THROUGH a star! I wish I were recording, because that was a first. I literally phased THROUGH a star as my ship was slowing down near the main anchor star...and it scared me cuz I thought I was going to be TOAST! No immediate damage was caused by the flying-through, but...took a minute to write this, and came back to find my ship was cooking at 150%, which broke my assist computers. Oh crap, that means I'll HAVE to land. But everything else seems to have survived the cooking. All in all, I marked this particular star with a "DO NOT FLY HERE" bookmark, to prevent anyone else from having this startling experience. I'll share the specific systems when I get home.
The "Broken Star" was from a previous report, that I didn't get around to sharing until now.

Anyway, I made it to the black hole, and WOW, I actually AM the first one to discover this Black Hole. Between that and the damage from heat, I think I'll NEED to sprint back home from now.
And now it's 869 jumps to home. That's quite a damn long ways to go...even AT a sprint. Brought that down to 808 jumps before posting the v.1 report (sometimes I edit these as I go along).

789 jumps from home, and I found another one of those "Burning Twins", only this time, I was at the control and much more attentive, so I could speed away before I'd get cooked (AGAIN). Still though, this was another one of those times I had to put a bookmark onto the system saying "DO NOT FLY HERE!" It's funny, of all the mind-numbing repetition and boring routine of exploration in general, today was the first day there was any sense of ACTUAL DANGER! And it was because the tail-end of Witchspace has a funny way of potentially PHASING YOU THROUGH STARS!

Took it down to 665 before I needed another break.

 

[Sapyx]

The FSD does have a few in-built safety features, including one that tries to makes sure you never actually Arrive inside a close-orbiting secondary star or planet. But it can still calculate a valid Arrival point that sees you travel straight through such an object and back out the other side, which can be a bit scary. And dangerous if you aren't paying attention (or have gone AFK), as it can easily dump you well within the secondary star's corona and start to overheat you.

All in all, I marked this particular star with a "DO NOT FLY HERE" bookmark, to prevent anyone else from having this startling experience.

While well-intentioned, I should point out that such navigational hazards are not permanent features. The location of your Arrival point within the system is determined by which direction, which star system you've just jumped from. Someone else jumping into that same system at that exact same time, but from the opposite direction, might not even notice the secondary star was there because it would be hiding behind the primary.

Further, such stars move in their orbits around each other; usually the co-orbital period when stars are that close is only a few days, or even a few hours. So if, a couple of hours after you made the hazardous jump, you retraced your route and made the exact same jump into that same star system, the stars would have moved and your ship would no longer be placed in danger.

So you've probably visited dozens of such hazardous binaries in the past, without even noticing them, simply because the stars weren't aligned.

You can minimize your exposure to such hazardous "contact binaries" by previewing each system before you jump into it and avoiding jumping into binary or multiple star systems at all. To me, constantly checking the galaxy map before jumping would slow me down way too much, all to avoid something which is in the end rather improbable (I've done over 20,000 jumps and only encountered a hazardous contact binary maybe three or four times) and not all that hazardous. Plus, there are plenty of interesting things to find in binary systems, which you'd miss out on if you bypassed them all.

 

[The Golden Knight]

The FSD does have a few in-built safety features, including one that tries to makes sure you never actually Arrive inside a close-orbiting secondary star or planet. But it can still calculate a valid Arrival point that sees you travel straight through such an object and back out the other side, which can be a bit scary. And dangerous if you aren't paying attention (or have gone AFK), as it can easily dump you well within the secondary star's corona and start to overheat you.



While well-intentioned, I should point out that such navigational hazards are not permanent features. The location of your Arrival point within the system is determined by which direction, which star system you've just jumped from. Someone else jumping into that same system at that exact same time, but from the opposite direction, might not even notice the secondary star was there because it would be hiding behind the primary.

Further, such stars move in their orbits around each other; usually the co-orbital period when stars are that close is only a few days, or even a few hours. So if, a couple of hours after you made the hazardous jump, you retraced your route and made the exact same jump into that same star system, the stars would have moved and your ship would no longer be placed in danger.

So you've probably visited dozens of such hazardous binaries in the past, without even noticing them, simply because the stars weren't aligned.

You can minimize your exposure to such hazardous "contact binaries" by previewing each system before you jump into it and avoiding jumping into binary or multiple star systems at all. To me, constantly checking the galaxy map before jumping would slow me down way too much, all to avoid something which is in the end rather improbable (I've done over 20,000 jumps and only encountered a hazardous contact binary maybe three or four times) and not all that hazardous. Plus, there are plenty of interesting things to find in binary systems, which you'd miss out on if you bypassed them all.

How'd I miss THIS?! But yeah, I figured the hazard is all about angle of entry. I've come across a small handful of such binary stars...and yes, they could've been potential trouble, as you've pointed out. Thing is, it's extremely rare to find a binary system with one of those two acting as the "anchor star". I'd say about a dozen, grand total, across all my travels so far. Yep, as I have observed, this is one of the incredibly rare times that exploration has been legitimately dangerous. Most of the time, it's just lone red dwarf stars, which can put the mind into a sort of hypnosis akin to driving along the stretches of featureless desert (like a road trip through most of Arizona and Nevada - or just play "Desert Bus", but imagine it being in space).

Either way, it is totally scary to see the ship fly and phase THROUGH a star...I definitely yelled out a loud "WOAH" the first time it's happened to me, doubly because of the aforementioned hypnotic state caused by acute sensory deprivation inflicted by exploration in general.

Anyway,

Day 23 Report:

I skipped a couple of days, because it was boring and tedious, with nothing particularly interesting. Again, same ol' deal of a few water planets every now and again, on a backdrop of ice balls...then today, I found a strange system that had more weird readings. I stopped to check for water planets, and there was one of those here as well. "Notable Stellar Phenomenon." That's the SECOND time it's happened in all the thousands of jumps I've made so far. I took enough pictures to capture the specific system I found this in.

"Prasinum Metallic Crystals", which resemble the original "Spiky Things" I saw way back. I'm not sure if they can be mined, but still...interesting find, very rare relative to my experiences.

Today's checkpoint takes us to a star labeled as 2MASS...which was an odd and interesting prefix. That was also not too much of a deviation on my way back to home in Sol. As I got closer, I found signs that these systems had more consistently been visited by others before. And we are definitely back in the "Inner Orion Spur", which is where the home sector is. Not quite in "The Bubble", but that'll be soon enough at this rate. After all, Elite Dangerous is more about the journey than the destination.

The star is a lonely giant blue star, already discovered. Figures, fairly anticlimactic. There are plenty of other 2MASS stars nearby; safe to assume ALL explored as well. Anyway, next stop (hopefully): HOME!

I found a second "Notable Stellar Phenomenon" about 50 to a hundred jumps later. 15,000 lightyears...and here I was, making a good pace to home, then this happens. At least it's near the water world of this solar system, so I can get that extra mapping done. More "Spiky Things". Ah well.

I'm going to take a break here, at 200 jumps from Sol. Very good progress, with all the neat stars and stuff I've seen. But nothing has been too Earth-shattering yet. That's part of why I skipped a couple of days with reporting.
Besides, I wanted to do some creative writing.

 

[Sapyx]

...Today's checkpoint takes us to a star labeled as 2MASS...which was an odd and interesting prefix...

Those are "real-world stars" (i.e. not procedurally-generated). The raw data for the system was taken from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey. With millions of stars in the 2MASS database, only a small fraction of it was imported into the ED galaxy - presumably the small fraction for which reliable parallax data was available, to give an estimate of distance. As the 2MASS survey was an infrared survey specifically designed to detect cool, dim objects like red dwarfs and brown dwarfs, most of the 2MASS objects in-game are such stars.

 

[The Golden Knight]

Abraham Lincoln Station, Earth, at time of arrival...

"Welcome back, Commander Golden-Knight. Enjoy your travel?"
"At first, yeah. But it got dull for the most part, past that point."
"Please state the manifest of your cargo."
"No material goods, just lots of data...enough to dwarf my first excursion, but barely a fraction of what some of the old-timers have put together."
"Okay, you are cleared to land, Commander Golden-Knight. Enjoy your stay at Earth."
"Copy that. I'll have to bring it in manually...docking computer got fried on the way back home."

The Cobra Mark 3 Freedom's Beginning made a very careful descent onto the landing pad; slipping through the slot had been no problem, but the pilot chose specifically to not speed for this special occasion, given the thousands of solar systems sitting on his digital storage device.

It took a good hour or two just to get the paperwork through, page after page of systems. Because having them all drop onto the desk of Universal Cartographics would be enough to give the secretary a heart attack. Regardless of how this measures up to anybody else, this by itself on its own terms could still wow some people. Each page entailed 50 solar systems, so 3,000 divided by 50...or 300 divided by 5. That's 60 pages and up. The pop-ups at Universal Cartographics seemed to be slightly wonky...crediting for the discoveries but not for the mappings (and the one time the mapping WAS credited, it broke and kept spitting out that same system). Here's hoping the back-end can tell the difference...and if not, at least the name Golden-Knight is floating thousands of lightyears away, on a few Earth-Like planets too. Even still, you can tell which ones were surface-scanned, because discovery alone is a flat 1,000 credits per...so the rougher numbers are affected by surface scanning in SOME way.

And the cloud trophy display has been updated, even if the photos got lazy on the way back. Still, there were some good finds. It was certainly enough to make upwards of HALF A BILLION CREDITS! (Added up to a grand total of almost 900,000,000 Credits.) I'm not afraid to boast about that because that amount is funny-money compared to the "old money" in this economy.
Now, I'd like a ship with a Low-Temperature-Diamond encrusted HOT TUB!

As for the Freedom's Beginning itself...

It's good to be back home, with Earth in the background.

 

[The Golden Knight]

Day...I lost count.

Should've documented the "48 hour challenge", about getting from one end of the galaxy to another, all in a vanilla ship, in a tight time limit. Signature has been updated to reflect the achievements.
On top of that, I've got over an hour of recorded footage of what it's like exploring...all the tedium and samey planets...which like the screenshot cache, won't be shared until AFTER I make it back home, whenever I complete that over the next few weeks. There's a handful of water planets, and even one or two Earth-Like Worlds...with at least one that wasn't yet discovered before I came along. So that's cute.

About 500 jumps back to galactic core, roughly...it's 19,000 lightyears, actually. Even a couple hundred jumps is enough to make me yearn for more action and excitement.

 

[The Golden Knight]

Abraham Lincoln Station, Earth, 5:51 AM

A lone speck blinked into existence a few kilometers away from the rotating station.

"HEY! Golden-Knight! We heard about you in the news articles! Buckyball seems VERY happy with your performance!"
"Damn straight! Now let me offload my cargo."
"Please state the nature of your manifest."
"I've got hundreds of millions of credits worth of data, my good friend. Going to the edge of the galaxy and back DOES pay off, for those who can stomach going 'THE LONG WAY'."

And the Proof of Achievement has been updated, with reams upon reams of pages filling up the Universal Cartographics desk. Thousands of solar systems, all added up, with more "First Discovered By" tags than the internal systems could keep up with. Having earned over a billion credits grand total through these adventures, there was no way to not be impressed. And yet, it still wasn't enough to get one star named after The Golden Knight.

"Well, I'll be eating good TONIGHT! Though I can also use a break, just take things in and all that."

 

[MaXxProsTe]

Actuaslly I saw people go into the center of galax... oh such a lame thing... so I was searching if someone did try go around the galaxy... But I ment like arount the VERY edge of it, so I found no one... your post seems to be only one with such words :-D But not as far as I thought xD I estimate my journey to take about 10000 jumps starting in Hearth nebula xD So I have second day and I WOULD like to made it in 80 days :-D But I wont do any reports about it... there is no time to reporting xD
I wonder -afraid- of those gaps on the end of the galaxy arms these gaps can get quite damn empty.

 

[The Golden Knight]

And honestly, even I have yet to complete that feat. I've gone through the diameter of the galaxy, not the circumference (which was the original goal). Thanks for the nudge all the same, and...sorry I disappointed the two people who cared (one of which includes myself specifically).

It's not a shortage of time to go around the galaxy in 80 days; I could get across the diameter in 2 (without any Engineering, even). It's more a matter of it becoming overwhelmingly mind-numbing and mostly samey to my mindset.

 

[MaXxProsTe]

That is Ok, Im not disappointed, that would be too harsh judgement :-D
And as for engeneering,I get only only to first stage, then it started to require some stupid things like to scan other ships wake-whatever and for that Ijust did not had nerves xD So I rather try to go very alone around the edge of the galaxy xD
With max jump capability of 22,6ly it is achievable, however I strugling a bit now to get through the "empty" void from "The formidine rift" back to the "easy part" in "Sanguienous rift", without "jump augments" which I keeping for the worst :-D
Also I just cannot help myself to scan all systems for all its planets, because... I just cannot leave them to lay there alone not to be discovered, you know :-D so it is taking quite a time also surface-scanning all Waterworlds and Earthlike ones -I found so far only one earthlike xD

 

[The Golden Knight]

Yes, I know the feeling. And such thoroughness compounds the already glacial pace of going around the galaxy. (To say nothing about all those "First Discovered" tags!)

 

[MaXxProsTe]

You know, all these "First discovered by..." it is just few bucks for pleasing the account, but the name is what it is about xD Actually now Im a bit frustrated, because I encountering one name again and again :-D and it is frustrating especially in such DAMn empty space -as on pic- where there are only about two or three options to go in each system :-D

 

[MaXxProsTe]

So today I just reached about (do not count it actually xD) 2000 jumps from Starting point in Hearth nebula.
...I feel like going slowly crazy of that journey xD

 

[The Golden Knight]

So today I just reached about (do not count it actually xD) 2000 jumps from Starting point in Hearth nebula.
...I feel like going slowly crazy of that journey xD

Uh-huh, now you see why I never actually completed my own circumnavigation.

 

[MaXxProsTe]

Uh-huh, now you see why I never actually completed my own circumnavigation.

Yap, today I had too much "things" around to do and I was not pay attention enough to the game and I did one y mistake and I stuck there in mid of BrownDwarf "field" so I had to call FuelRats xD But I was damn scared of loosing my data stored in ship
Also one of my goals of this tryp was "Not to got any help" so that is off xD
Also the FR guy askedd for ship jump stat and been quite scarce with his assurance about me jumping just 24,4Ly xD His (her? I did not ask for a gender but had female avatar) Anaconda (i think) did about 50Ly, but it still 3,4 hours for him to get to my position xD